This invention relates generally to voice operated electronic devices configured to block radio commercials and, more particularly, to a system and method for people listening to an electronic media device, such as AM/FM radio to allow them to block commercials and substitute alternate audio content (music, voice, or sounds of any kind) during this blocked period.
A frequent complaint by listeners of radio programs, whether talk radio or music radio or television, is that they become mildly or even severely annoyed by what is seen as wasted time on commercials. Many listeners are even so bothered by the content or amount of time spent on commercials that they are willing to pay extra money to eliminate advertisements altogether. This has become common with online streaming audio services. However, listeners of traditional radio and television programs have so far not been presented with a viable solution to stop commercials or to do so entirely by hands-free voice commands.
Various patent proposals have been made for stopping or blocking commercials. Although presumably effective for their intended purposes, the existing proposals require complex and expensive circuitry that tries to detect when a commercial comes on the airwaves and then block it until the actual program returns. In other words, existing devices or systems that try to block commercials are far more complicated in that they attempt to fully automate the commercial blocking process. This results in expensive and impractical (not cost effective) designs.
Therefore, it would be desirable to have a system and method for blocking radio commercials and for replacing blocked content with other media content for a quantity of time specified by the listener or, if not indicated, for a predetermined amount of time. Further, it would be desirable to have a system and method for blocking and substituting that works entirely by detecting predetermined voice commands of a user and actuating the blocking and substituting accordingly.